Cruising through the botanical garden early yesterday morning, the very first thing I happened across was something that I’ve, honestly, never spotted in ‘the wild’ before. Which is pretty surprising to me, considering how often I specifically go out not just into prime habitats, but actually looking for snakes. You can put this down to rotten observation powers if you like; without someone else present who did spot all the snakes I missed to provide a necessary baseline, I can’t rationally argue it, but I seem to see a hell of a lot that others miss, so I personally put it down to just weird luck. This one was smack in the middle of a footpath, and its coloration made it subtle but not really camouflaged.
This is a copperhead, Agkistrodon contortrix, the only venomous snake in the area. By all accounts, there are a fair number of them around, meaning people stumble across them from time to time, but there are not so many that a serious hazard is presented. This particular one saw me at least as soon as I saw it, and instead of moving off the path (which it could do easily, into excellent protective cover,) it began giving warning displays. The first was the vibrating tail, which occurs among more than rattlesnakes, and it often presents a drumming, buzzing, or rattling sound depending on the material that it contacts – in this case it was silent. The second display is the classic and ominous one, the raising of its head from the ground and rearing back as if preparing to strike, which can be seen here – my position didn’t permit the best view of the head, and there wasn’t a lot I could (safely) do to remedy this. What concerned me was how easily someone who wasn’t paying attention could have stepped right up to the snake, which clearly wasn’t inclined to abandon its position. An awful lot of snake bites occur from people doing stupid things, and occasionally from not considering that they’re disturbing a prime habitat like brush piles, but in this case, it was clear someone could have been bitten just by not paying attention.
Now, I feel obligated to clarify a few things. Copperhead bites are rarely fatal, and the encounters few and far between; as such, they don’t really pose much of a threat, despite the reputation a lot of people want to impart to venomous snakes, and often every snake. Crossing the road is dangerous, and much more likely to result in a fatality. Playing with your stupid toy phone while driving a car is more dangerous still. We cope with these dangers by recognizing them and (usually) by avoiding doing the really stupid things, like walking out into the road without looking. And that same behavior pretty much eradicates all dangers from venomous snakes. Watch where you’re walking. Don’t leave brush piles in high-traffic areas. Don’t poke around blindly in the woods. It’s not hard.
But in a lot of cases, there is a perceived difference between dangers like cars, and venomous snakes. The snake is an example of agency; it can decide to attack you. Which is not exactly true: it decides to defend itself. While this might seem like semantics, it’s an important distinction, because the defensive behavior will only be displayed if the snake feels threatened – no snake can eat a human, nor do they have any vestige of animosity or ‘pre-emptive strikes’ or whatever (those belong solely to our own species.) To avoid snake bites, leave the snake alone. It really is that simple.
Plenty of people will tell you of truly aggressive snake attacks that they’ve heard of, which is fine if you’re inclined to believe every story you hear. The people who actually work in emergency rooms, and who catalog the reasons behind snake bites, tell a different story: most bites occur when someone initiates contact, either by attempting to ‘remove’ the snake, or by showing off in some testosterone-fueled idea of what’s necessary. I convinced the ‘aggressive’ snake here to leave the path, without even getting close to it – by stomping my feet. It felt the vibrations (they don’t have ears) and considered this a bad sign, slipping into the undergrowth out of harm’s way. That’s what the second photo is showing. And as much as I might have liked getting some better shots, I knew they weren’t worth increasing the risk (and I’ve handled more snakes than I can count, including copperheads when I worked animal rescue – that’s what that distinction of in ‘the wild’ meant up above, since all of my previous encounters were from initiated calls from the public, and not a random discovery like, seriously, 99% of my photography.)
By the way, a huge percentage of copperhead encounters are actually with anything but copperheads, and the same can be said for all venomous snakes. People that can’t tell a crow from a hawk will confidently tell you exactly what a venomous snake looks like; it’s much more dramatic than telling everyone they came across a corn snake in their yard. So for the purposes of safety, I will (once again) tell anyone who comes across this post how to identify a copperhead, quickly and dependably. And I do this not as much to protect people from copperheads, but to protect every other species from over-reactive nitwits.
How to identify a copperhead. Copperheads have a distinctive pattern which can be easily discerned in multiple ways. The dark part of the pattern is hourglass-shaped, with the ‘waist’ of the hourglass falling along the spine. Seen from the side only, this may look like Hershey’s kisses. The pattern has a very ‘airbrushed’ look, fading rapidly from the edges, more so than any other species. Alone among North Carolina snakes (and possibly North America – not sure,) the dark portion of the pattern is thinnest along the spine; in every other species, the dark portion is broadest. And finally, the top of the head has no markings whatsoever, and is all one color. All of these can be seen immediately from any distance, and often with only a portion of the snake’s body visible.
Two other ‘coppery’ colored snakes in this area get mistaken for copperheads routinely, solely because nobody has taken the thirty seconds required to know how to tell them apart. They are both harmless, but you know what? That’s not even an issue. If anyone encounters a snake and cannot be assed to distinguish the species, a broom will convince any snake to move on. Not even whacking it, but a simple push (which is far less likely to provoke a defensive response from the snake – seriously, why piss it off if it’s not already?)
“But someone else will encounter it! Think of the children!” Yeah yeah yeah – see above about the number of actual encounters to begin with, and also about roads. We’re surrounded by speeding cars; we keep kids safe by teaching them some simple rules. A snake that has been chased from an area has already established the area as not safe; the likelihood of it returning (especially if the ideal hiding places have been cleared from the property) is low. Most snake bites do not occur in children, despite how oblivious they are to their surroundings. It’s the idiots that are trying to protect everyone else that get bitten far more often. And that’s when bites even occur, which really isn’t often at all – feel free to look at your own news reports and compare the snake bites to the pedestrian accidents…
Seen above is a northern water snake, Nerodia sipedon – not venomous, despite their willingness to bite if provoked. I’ve encountered dozens of these, and only been bitten when I grabbed them. Copperheads do not hang out in the water – they eat things like mice, so they prefer woods and brush.
These are corn snakes, Pantherophis guttatus, housed with copperheads – you should easily be able to tell them apart. Corn snakes also aren’t venomous, and in fact are ridiculously mellow. I haven’t seen one of these in the wild either, come to think of it.
But overall, here’s all the guide you’ll need. Leave them alone – they’ll go about their own business, because they really don’t want any interactions with humans. If they’re in an area with enough human activity that you think an accidental encounter might occur, shoo them off – it’s trivially easy to do from a safe distance. Any other actions pretty much qualify as, “being stupid,” and you know what? We’re supposed to be the smart ones…
The chicks are getting quite sizable now, able to move about with almost the same agility as the adults and often seen standing upright near the edge of the nest. The baby down is giving way to the flight feathers in the wings and tail, but the main body feathers (called ‘coverts’) have yet to appear, which means the parents still hover over them on wet or chilly days. The body feathers are primary protection against the elements, forming both a water-resistant barrier and an outer layer that can trap their own body heat within; lacking these, they will rely on the parents for a while longer. Yet the growing surety of their movements and the alertness with which they view their surroundings is a marked change from just a week ago, not to mention that they’re surprisingly close to the adults in size now. I haven’t watched them for a long enough period to determine exactly how much they’re eating, but it certainly isn’t trivial.
When the action started I simply held the shutter release down and let the frames crank out. Later on, I took fourteen consecutive frames and edited them into this animated gif (pronounced “gorbachev”) because it shows the amusing struggle much better. Yes, video would be even better – drop me a donation through that ‘Feed the gator’ widget to the right and we’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, we’ll carry on with the still photos.
It seemed like any other day where I’d been neglecting my photo sorting duties and thus facing the daunting task of going through hundreds of images, but as they say, things can seem perfectly normal (if slightly guilty) yet suddenly turn dark and ominous. And of course, since I’d been putting this off, how much time has passed that could have made a bigger difference? How much farther along in an undoubtedly sinister plan have we been carried, due to my neglect? Or are we in the nick of time, now aware of something that might easily have passed, quite literally, under our noses?
The hatched Chinese mantises (Tenodera sinensis) that I posted about earlier – and near-perpetually on this blog, really – have spread out across the front yard to some fairly remote locations; remote, at least, for something that measures 10mm in body length. Above, one stalks among the leaves of a creeping jenny plant, while at left another peers suspiciously at a glimpse of activity from the opposite side of its day lily leaf, apparently unaware that a sibling was perched there. They are, if nothing else, getting plenty of water, since we haven’t gone three days without rain since they’ve hatched, but as yet I haven’t seen them with any prey, related or otherwise. This doesn’t mean much – I have only seen mantids with prey a handful of times, but I’ve watched them grow huge in the meantime, so they’re obviously not waiting until I’m present.
Many of these photos look like they were taken at night, which is generally not the case. The cause is the camera settings: at these magnifications the range of sharp focus is very short, so I opt for a small aperture, usually f16, to increase depth of field. Camera shake can also be an issue, so I shoot at 1/200 second shutter speed, and count on the flash to provide the light that allows both of these to be functional; without it, the images would be drastically underexposed. And in fact, they are – but only for the backgrounds where the flash doesn’t reach, dispersed by the softbox attachment. There are two ways to combat this: have the background very close so that it can be illuminated by the flash too (this usually means an added leaf or something,) or have a secondary light that illuminates the background at the same time. This can be done, but it’s awkward, and changing position means the light has to be moved too, which obviously limits the spontaneity and grabbing the brief but compelling action of the ambulatory subject. What I usually aim to do is have something that can sit immediately behind the subject, like a nearby leaf, but otherwise not worry about the rest. As you can see, it’s easy to have one’s subject framed against pure blackness, which only works for some subjects – darker ones, naturally, can nearly disappear in such conditions, so I’m often picky about my shooting angle, and won’t even bother with some shots because I know they won’t turn out very well.
By the way, The Girlfriend was present for this session, unlike most other times, and she provided a bit of scale by putting her fingertip in the path of one of the newborns as it made a circuit of the same planter that held the egg case. Had she moved her finger towards the mantis, it would have shied off in alarm, but leaving her finger in place while the mantis approached was just fine; shame I missed the focus. In my defense, their movement will bring them into and out of focus in a moment, and this was the only frame where the fingertip appeared – it serves its purpose here, crap though it is. We’ll need this impression (about size, I mean) as we go in even closer.
One of the two resident common snapping turtles (Chelydra serpentina) was peeking out of the water while I was around, one of the very few times I’ve seen this – their shyness is way out of proportion to their reputation and even just their appearance, but the ‘expression’ in this particular image is up for interpretation; I can see a lot of different possibilities, and I’m betting you could too if I were to merely suggest them to you, but I’d rather you take a good look on your own without the impressions. I liked the faintly eye-bending effect of the water’s distortion, where the portions above the surface look normal but everything below gets shifted in perspective and reshapes the turtle’s head – for a more natural view 
In contrast to the startled appearance of the anole at top, this American five-lined skink (Plestiodon fasciatus) watched us creeping closer with little apparent concern, at times seeming to drift off into slumber. Eventually, we got close enough that it figured concealment was called for and it slipped into a crack in the rock sculpture that you see here, but not before we got a fine selection of images. It’s all about going slow, and getting the shots you can before you try to get closer. Not everything that you get is going to be a keeper, but it’s better to get an okay shot from a short distance than to try and get close enough for the best pics and scare the subject away instead, ending up with nothing at all.
While the skink was drifting off, this one was almost certainly well beyond that point. This red-bellied water snake (Nerodia erythrogaster) was sitting in plain sight right alongside the raised walkway, never even twitching as we leaned in close. Even with frequent exposure to humans, I find it hard to believe the snake was that conditioned to close approaches, but here’s the crucial factor: snakes have no eyelids. Basking as it was in a patch of bright sunlight, this one most likely was fast asleep, and our slow approach without throwing a shadow across its face wasn’t enough to trigger any protective response. Add in the raised walkway we were on the entire time, preventing us from producing any vibrations that the snake could feel (they don’t have ears, either,) and you get a distinct possibility that the snake was deep in Dreamland, or whatever passes for such with a snake (Carl Sagan’s book The Dragons of Eden gives some interesting speculations about how reptile brains actually work, if you have the interest – dreaming seems relatively unlikely.)
Remember when I said that it would be interesting to see if the fishing spider managed to 
There’s a limit, however. When a friend comes to visit, one who has been shooting longer than I have, that routinely visits places like Belize and the Alps, and her most treasured travel accoutrement is a selfie-stick… well, it’s hard to keep the bile from rising.
To say that the front garden is loaded with baby mantises now is selling it short – it looks like an invasion, and one does not have to look hard to find them anymore. In fact, it’s a challenge to find a plant that doesn’t have one on it, including a potted flower on the steps, which is an indication that some of them had to cross the steps to get there, making me even more self-conscious of where I walk. But at the same time, a lot of arthropod species reproduce in vast numbers because the loss rate is high, the newborns being too vulnerable to survive on average. If each offspring has a 5% chance of survival to adulthood but 100 are produced in a brood, this means five will (again, on average) make it through. I’ve seen several hatchings now, and despite the large numbers at first, by the time egg-laying season rolls around I can only find two or three at best.
While I’m still on the subject of motherhood, I’ll just throw this one out there. The fishing spider (Dolomedes tenebrosus) that I first introduced a month ago disappeared for a while, only to be found again a few nights back. Just this evening I photographed her again, and suspected that she looked a bit smaller in the abdomen than before; 
